


Insomnia Theatre, or: What is Loki up to?

by Weaselwoman



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Norse Mythology - Neil Gaiman
Genre: A little angst, Bees, Crack, Fluff, Gen, Marvel Actors, adobe, fat shaming by bees?, fat shaming?, more crack than fluff, mythological underpinnings, oranges are not apples, parole, reference to sex with rocks, schwa, so its total crack, tetrapus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:49:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 4,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26140639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weaselwoman/pseuds/Weaselwoman
Summary: In Authorland, the weather is hot and sticky, the season is quarantine; so why not tell some stories?
Relationships: Loki & Tony Stark
Comments: 26
Kudos: 12





	1. Loki is knitting.

Loki is knitting, poorly.

Yes, he’d learned weaving from his mother (“Patiently, patiently. The key is consistency, see, darling?”) and knitting itself from fellow sailors on ocean voyages (“Well, it fills the time and keeps the hands busy, and yer might as well get somethin’ useful out of it, y’see?”). But patience was as foreign to him as it was to the hunted leopard.

So this rag, this—what-is-it?—was lumpy and pulling; stitches tight with pent-up anger warring with those loose with I-don’t-give-a-shit. The color was irrelevant. And the sticks:

“Stark, why are you giving me sharpened wooden rods? So trusting? I made a deadly dart from mistletoe, you know.”

“These knitting needles are bamboo. Grass, not wood. What can you make with grass?”

Well, he had made a net once, under Ran’s teaching; but he couldn’t decide whether it should catch whales or herring, so he’d thrown it into a fire. And Heimdall had noticed that…

“But I am a prisoner!”

Tony sighed. “It’s just parole. A time-out. This is supposed to be therapeutic.”

“It is formless. Chaotic.”

“Seems appropriate,” Tony mused just slightly too loudly. “Here. Once you finish making that, I’ll make it pretty or useful or both. Deal?”

“In that case…” The needles flew in suddenly capable hands. A stitch, another stitch, some casting off, a knot… “I’m done.”

Stark had supplies that Loki had not. A large big-eyed needle, plastic; some string and fluff; some glue. Paste gems in a drawer. “Now let’s see…” he threaded the needle with yarn, stitched in a rough circle, tightened his sewing a little, thrust in a loose ball of fluff, then tightened it entirely. “There. An octopus…well, a tetrapus. Dummy will love it. It just needs googly eyes.”


	2. Loki is picking fruit.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Too much info on nutrition.

Loki is in a tree, picking fruit. His feet do not touch the ground. As well as other clothing, he is wearing a green bandana to protect his nose and mouth from the dust. Two farm children watch.

It started that morning. Tony had been in the workspace, drinking one of his green concoctions and working on some small intricate device when Loki walked in.

After sniffing discretely at the drink, Loki found his curiosity would have to be answered another way. “What is this?”

“Here,” Tony said, distracted. “Just try it.”

A taste—a _small_ taste—which Loki promptly spat out. “This is vile!”

“Yep. Kale-craptastic. But it’s good for you. Full of vitamins and minerals and anti-oxidants.” Tony finally looked up. “You don’t know what any of those are, do you?”

“I know what minerals are, Stark. I personally have fucked rocks.”

“Okay, one? That’s too much information for this time of day. _Any_ time of day. Two, that isn’t what is meant by minerals in this context. Minerals in food—yes, this is food—or nutritional supplements means chemical elements that the body needs. Oh, and before you ask, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen don’t count as minerals. You know what vitamins are?”

“Like the Captain’s Vita-Rays?”

“Uh, no. Vitamins are chemical compounds that the body needs but can’t make for itself. Humans can’t make Vitamin C so we eat fruit, drink juice, or take pills.”

“Or nutritional supplements.” Loki always liked big words and phrases.

“Right. And anti-oxidants…”

“Keep you from rusting from the inside,” said Loki.

Tony blinked. “You know what? Close enough. Don’t you have health food on Asgard?”

“We have Idunn’s apples. If we don’t eat an apple regularly, we grow sick and old.”

“They keep the doctor away?”

Loki visualized Eir, present for every injury and childhood emergency. “…No.”

Tony was suddenly interrogating his Stark phone. “What kind of apples? Red delicious? Envy? Pink lady?”

“You are taunting me. Idunn’s apples are golden.”

“Let’s see. Not apple season … Bruce says these were the golden apples of the Hesperides… find a farm… perfect! Come on.”

“Where?”

“We’re going fruit picking.”

Hence Loki up a tree, with a basket on one arm filled with pebbly-skinned orange fruit, and his free hand enticing another rough orb to free itself of glossy green leaves. The basket full, down he came.

“Mister?” said one of the watching urchins. “How’d you do that?”

“Was I not supposed to pick the fruits?”

Some confused gestures; Tony translated. “He means the levitation.”

“Oh,” said Loki, dismissively. “Magic.”

They sat at a rough outdoor table. “Now try one, and tell me how it compares to Idunn’s apples.”

“It looks different,” Loki started.

“Full of Earthgard vitamins. Go on.”

Loki bared his teeth and took a large bite. Spat it out, outraged.

“Loki! You don’t eat the rind. You _peel_ it first.”

“Then it is not the same kind of apple!”

Tony shrugged. “Eh, apples and oranges…”


	3. Loki is rowing a boat.

Loki is rowing a boat—or he would be, if this device that applies only the basics of a rower’s movements were itself a little boat on a lake and not a stationary structure in Stark’s home gymnasium. Tony himself putters from machine to machine, letting JARVIS count for him, while Loki is content to sit and row.

“Reps, Loki! It’s all about repetitions!” Tony stands close, sweaty, with a towel around his neck; Loki rows on, and says nothing.

Another machine’s worth done for Tony Stark; he pauses to watch his parolee. “Now don’t break that,” he admonishes.

“Why would I break it?” Loki asks.

“Well, you Asgardians—I mean, err, your brother—I mean, Thor—he doesn’t get to work out in here any more. See, he’d lose concentration and then break the machine he was on. So no more machines for him.”

“I see,” says Loki, watching the counter on his little ship, and not looking at Tony.

“Yeah, well….” Stark is off to stretch his muscles on another machine.

Loki finishes his reps—411, which is neither even nor a prime number, and so less predictable—and puts the “oars” down. Stands with one foot on the frame of the rowing machine; presses down until he hears a sharp crack! Were this an actual boat, he had just broken its spine.

“Oops,” he says insincerely.


	4. Loki is signing autographs.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kinda meta.

In the park, Loki is signing a picture, his four-letter name in the Roman alphabet—not runes—with little horns drawn over the “o,” like an angry umlaut. Hands it to an excited girl, and another rushes to place her paper into his waiting hand.

Tony stands fidgeting while he waits. There is getting to be quite a clump of girls, with some boys, and some grown women, and some grown men, all waiting for their pieces of paper to be signed. Finally, one satisfied customer blunders into him, and Tony snatches the falling page from the air. (This doesn’t count as being handed something.) Looks at it.

There is a picture of a handsome actor, whose freckled face and ginger coloring in no way resembles Loki. Tony hands it back to the satisfied customer, and nabs Loki by the collar of his shirt. Loki retreats in the shorter man’s grasp, waving off his(?) fans(?!?).

“That wasn’t your picture,” Tony observes, when they are alone again.

“I know,” says Loki.

Another day, another airing, different time, different place, and the fans still find them. No-one recognizes Stark, which both pleases and miffs him. Loki is still signing pictures, and the horns on his umlauted “o”s seem to grow with every signature.

Tony waits (im)patiently for the ritual to conclude.

Tony remembers a time, in his mis-spent early youth in the libertine 70s, when Manhattan was an open party, day or night. The only time everyone slept had seemed to be 6 a.m. on Sunday mornings. These days? No such luck. Pausing for coffee at an open-air kiosk soon brings a crowd. “You’re a one-man Beatlemania,” Tony says, to Loki’s confusion.

“There’s no way this won’t get back to that actor fellow. Do you think he’ll be pleased?”

“I am expanding his audience. And you don’t know; perhaps ‘that actor fellow’ is just me in disguise.”

“No way! You can’t act your way out of a paper bag.”

“I beg your pardon!”

“See? Your emotional range only goes from pouting to tantrum.”

“Hmpf.”

Well, maybe it included silent fuming…

The fan-slams finally end when Tony confiscates Loki’s cell phone.

“What did you think you were doing?” Tony asks, giving his parolee a JARVIS-scrubbed Stark phone.

“Isn’t it obvious? I’m building an army.”


	5. Loki is blowing his nose.

Loki is blowing his nose, loudly and messily, into a paper kerchief that Stark tells him is _de rigueur_. His watering eyes are red—not quite Jotunn red—and his normally precise elocution has changed into a broken-nosed Brooklynese. Loki is not happy.

Tony is willing to keep passing him “facial tissues” (it’s a euphemism, but not a sexy one), but he will not pick up the used ones, so Loki must carry his own foulnesses to the trash for disposal. (A SHIELD hazardous duty team outside picks them up in the hopes the disease can be weaponized, “just in case.”) Tony _will_ , however, tend to incontinent robots and automobiles, so this is not fair. And he tries amateur diagnostics.

“Maybe it’s a common cold.”

“Am I turning blue? No? Then I am _not_ cold. And certainly not common.”

“Maybe it’s a bug that’s going around.”

“Then debug it! Is that not what you do?”

“Maybe it’s an STD. You know, like rockpox.”

“I have not had congress with any of your local rocks.”

“Could be tertiary, like syphilis. Endemic.”

“Stark!”

“Okay, okay. Maybe it’s an allergy. You could be allergic to fans.”

Loki sniffed, then blew his nose. “How would you find this out?” (Pronounced _How wood you find dis oudt_?)

“An allergist. But the SHIELD doctors don’t want to see you.”

“I don’t want to see them either!”

“Well if you wouldn’t threaten to turn them into toads…I know. Bruce to the rescue.”

Bruce Banner was oddly and wearily cheerful. Loki was uncomfortable to be near him, but also remained a bit angry about his “poison-skinned apple joke.” Tony felt it necessary to referee.

“You—careful with the metaphors. You—don’t turn him into a toad.”

“You mean something big and green?” said Bruce, with a tooth-baring smile.

“Yeah, that,” Tony said. “You—” a screech of metal in the background—“No, not you, U…”

“Your robot is incontinent again,” noted Loki.

“Yeah, if I can find that oil leak, I’ll plug it for real.”

Meanwhile Bruce was sketching with a pen on Loki’s forearm. “This is a standard allergen test grid. I’ll inoculate you with common allergens, and see which ones you react to…” A sneeze from Loki, and the pen went sideways, careful gridwork turned into squiggles.

Bruce sighed, continued. “Here’s the allergen kit.”

“You are going to stick me with _needles_?” Loki flinched, and the first scratch went deeper than it had to.

Torture victim with some residual PTSD, right. “Here,” Tony said, “I’ll hold his arm steady.”

Bruce told Loki, “It will just be a few little scratches. It’s easier if you don’t look.”

So of course Loki must look; but he (mostly) did not flinch. When the pricking was done: “What now?”

“We wait and see what develops.”

“Stark and I both wait poorly.”

_That was true_ , Tony admitted to himself. “A game?”

“Not poker,” said Bruce.

“I’ve already been poked,” sniffed Loki.

“Chess?” Tony suggested.

“No way in the world. I’ve heard about your chess games!” [Author’s note: This is a gratuitous plug for the author’s “[Chess with Loki](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1543301/chapters/3268268),” also on AO3.]

“ _Tafl_?” suggested Loki. It came out _dafl_.

“What’s _dafl_?”

“He means _tafl_ ,” said Tony, before the misunderstanding could erupt into war. “It’s a strategy game, like chess.”

“Only more structured,” said Loki.

“I’ll teach you,” said Tony. “We’ll be on one team, and Cheater McCheaterson there will be the other. Offense or defense?”

“I’ll attack,” said Loki. “As usual.”

A short game (which Tony and Bruce lost) later—“I told you he cheats,” Tony said to Bruce, just loud enough for Loki to hear—and it was time to examine Loki’s arm. There were no red flowers in the little boxes and squiggled boxes, but a Tony fingerprint blazed bright _itchy_ red.

“You’ve been finger-painting with sriracha?” Bruce asked.

“No…” Tony thought. “I may have gotten some oil on me, from that leak U has.”

“What kind of oil?”

“Let me check the bottle. Son of a bitch! It’s counterfeit. Look!”

Bruce read the label aloud. “‘ _Quacker Oil—a Subsidiary of Hammer Industries_.’”

“I’m not allergic to ducks,” Loki said; and sneezed.


	6. Loki is reading his fan mail.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> slightly more of the meta stuff...

Loki is reading fan mail on one of the computer network outlets Stark has provided when Tony walks by, coffee cup in hand, and looks over his shoulder.

“Pretending to be that actor fellow again?”

“No,” said Loki as he read. “All of them.”

“What?” The latest missive started as _Dear Scarlett…_ as it downloaded, but had changed to _Dear Loki…_ when Tony glanced at it again. “Why?”

“Well, if you won’t give me the adulation I am due, I must bask in it vicariously.” (I told you Loki likes big words.)

“You’re printing all this?”

“Yes. And now I am taking my worshippers’ prayers to the roof to ignite them.”

“Loki, that’s not how we pray these days. And, and… besides, these are _stolen_ prayers.”

“When they burn, they will become mine.”

And gathering up the load of papers, he walked to the open elevator, where an overflowing bin waited.

Tony sat down in the vacated chair. “JARVIS, how long has he been at this?”

“Since 3 a.m., Sir.”

“Get Dummy up there with a fire extinguisher, will you?”

“He is in place, and I have a water-dropping helicopter on call from the Fire Department.”

“You know something? I like your plan B better. Let’s go with that one.”

A Very Wet God had his self-worship session cut short, and the Firefighters Relief Charity was richly rewarded with a large and anonymous donation.


	7. Loki is reading again.

Loki is reading something off the computer monitor as Tony walks by. (Tony has learned to be suspicious after the fan-mail incident.)

“I don’t understand this…” Loki says as he passes.

“Don’t understand what? Earthican politics? Trolls?”

“No, this—” and reads off the screen—“ _Three Stooges Erotic Fanfiction_.”

_No time is too early for Scotch_ , Tony tells himself. Steels himself to give the standard “the Internet is weird” speech. Still: “What about it?”

“Why is it Larry has the curly hair and not Curly, who is bald? Did one steal it from the other? And if so, why are they yet sporting together?”

“You know something?” _Definitely Scotch time_. Tony patted Loki’s shoulder with heavy tenderness, like Obie used to do to him, with Obie’s meaning to it: _You poor dumb rube_. “I’ll just let you figure that one out for yourself, okay?”


	8. Loki is throwing knives.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki is being helpful.

Loki is throwing knives at stationary targets. The knives are not his; they will be Natasha’s once Tony has decided they are perfect enough. (Tony says he is being a _betataster_ , whatever that is.) Each blade vibrates once it lands in the bullseye of its appropriate target. Loki is bored.

“Ready for moving targets?” Oh yes, they are also fine-tuning some self-motivated targets for Clint Barton, Loki’s erstwhile minion. (If Barton doesn’t mind Loki’s input in the targets’ development, Loki does not mind skewering them for Barton’s eventual gain. Such is the nature of parole.) Five, six …

“Dealer’s choice!” Tony announces, and there is a rush of targets, many more than the remaining knives. Loki throws all the knives, two-handed, inhumanly fast; follows them with zaps of magic. All the targets are down.

“You were supposed to pick a few to hit!”

“I chose them all.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Sir,” says JARVIS, interrupting, and creates between them a holographic image. In slow motion, a mid-air knife slams through one target, turns without any evident outside input, then slays another.

“Hold it,” says Tony. “That’s not physically… Natasha can’t do that!”

“She can’t?” Loki shrugged. “That is not the problem you asked me to address.”

“Got anything _useful_ to say, since I can’t trust the test results?”

“You might move the center of gravity of each knife slightly further back,” Loki said, as he departed for the elevator. “I had to compensate.”


	9. Loki is making bricks.

Loki is making bricks—well, adobe; mixing straw and mud with his feet in a shallow trench. It is hot and sweaty work, and the humidity is high here; plus there are stinging insects. (He has already come to an accommodation with the insects, who have agreed to bite others, not him; still, it is unpleasant.) Loki is interested, but not enjoying himself.

Tony is at some conference in a swanky resort here, in some wet volcanic mountains far south of Puente Antiguo, and has “loaned” Loki to the park archaeologists for some arts-n-crafts therapy. (Again with therapy? What is this, anyway?) All of Loki’s previously known building techniques involve lumber, sod or stone; he thinks of the adobe as artificial sod. (Although the local ground plants—chollas—will not a make good turf roof.) Still, why muddle it with straw? And why barefoot?

As slightly-too-warm mud squishes between his elegant toes, Loki realizes that “brickmaking” is a pretext. They are making something else here, using winemaking techniques—perhaps straw wine? “This will ferment, yes?” he asks the ‘Park Ranger,’ and gets an answer in the affirmative.

“So you are making wine?”

“Maybe whiskey,” says the Ranger, humoring him.

“Oh, like Scotch. And then you distill it into bottles?”

“No, the slurry goes into these forms on the ground. The fermentation bakes them.”

Loki sniffs. “Better Scotch than bricks.”

The Ranger, our patient and anonymous third party, sighs. “You know, I agree with you on that. Nothing gets built with Scotch, though.”

“I think Stark would disagree with you.”

“Tony Stark?”

“Is there another?”

“Is he here? … Say, who are you, anyway?”

“A humble craftsman, hoping to learn your techniques. Loptr Niemannson,” Loki said, putting on sandals and walking away. (But watch out for chollas, Loki!)

“So, what did you learn today?” Tony asks in the resort suite that night.

Loki accepts a small portion of Scotch, sniffs it carefully. Under the strong alcohol nose, it does not smell like feet. “How to mis-use fermentation. Are not bricks made by excretion?”


	10. Loki is in time-out.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one is angsty.

Loki is in time-out, in a small room without windows or doors. The walls are enameled white; light comes diffused from the whole of the ceiling. The floor is not cool under his feet. There is a bed (not his), but no food or water or drains. No books.

He doesn’t remember what he did—or why _this_ act, probably just like any other as far as he knows, has drawn such a strict response—and no one will explain it to him.

“Where is Stark?” he screams at blank walls. No answer.

…

Later, he hallucinates his mother’s voice. “Loki, darling: these playmates are mortals. Did no one explain _mortal_ to you?”

…

Later still, he hears what he thinks is a recording of Fury’s voice: “…this time, throw away the key.”

…

Eventually, he gives up hope. Almost.

Loki screams, “Let me out!” pounding his fists on the identical walls, hearing his own voice as plaintive as the miauing of a cat too long dependent on humans. Collapses finally on the floor, hopelessness complete.

…

“Well, how’d the test of the time accelerator go?”

It is Stark, unchanged, at his bedside. It looks like Loki’s own bed, his own room. The hallucinations have become solid reality, apparently. _His_ reality, from which he cannot escape. Loki grabs at a wrist, yanks Tony down. “ _Never_ do that again.”

Although Tony smells genuine, it will take many days for Loki to be convinced that this is the same reality he left just three hours earlier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vague inspiration: _Abyss_ by plumadesatada on AO3.


	11. Loki is wearing headphones.

Loki is trying on sound-transfer systems, at Tony’s recommendation. Ear-buds are intrusive; but headphones, while cumbersome, are acceptable.

Tony walks by. “Hey, Reindeer Games. I dig the earmuffs.”

_Especially_ noise-cancelling headphones (for Loki’s choice as to what constitutes noise). Loki smiles.


	12. Loki is talking to bees.

Tony hadn’t noticed it so much in New York, but here in Malibu it was obvious that Loki was talking to the local bees. One would land upon an outstretched finger; Loki would hum quietly, and the bee would depart.

“I’m not sure you should be doing that here,” Tony said, at the table under eucalyptus trees. “Rumor has it they’ve been Africanized.”

An elegant eyebrow raised; another bee welcomed and hummed at. After it left, Loki asked, “Why should that matter?”

“Supposedly, African bees are meaner. They form big swarms and may all attack you at once.”

“Ah,” Loki said. “Like humans. Your ancestors came from Africa, did they not? Some tens of thousands of years ago?”

As summer progressed, the discussions with the local bees became more pronounced. Once, Tony watched an upset bee sting Loki and collapse; Loki healed himself, then picked up the bee from the grass and breathed life back into it. The bee left in high dudgeon. “A disagreement,” is how Loki categorized the encounter.

“Maybe you need to try a different language.”

On a drizzly morning, Tony watches from the garage as Loki, surrounded by a thin cloud of bees, prances and wiggles and dances until a few, then several, then all the bees are dancing with him. The cloud departs.

“What was that about?”

“Oh, they speak to each other in dance. It was hard for them to understand me, however. I’m too big for the individual bees to catch all the details, so they have to compare notes.”

“Humming was not enough?”

“Not for such a sophisticated notion. Perhaps if the bees were larger…”

“No! No giant bees! Don’t even think about it.”

“Hmm. There _may be_ another way.”

The rainy season was starting in earnest; it was getting to be time to go back to New York. As he drained oil from the cars to be left behind, Tony heard voices through the open garage door. In the house; in the kitchen. He wasn’t expecting visitors.

Tony heard giggling. He really wasn’t expecting the kind of visitors who giggled. Maybe Girl Scouts? Wait, maybe Loki _alone_ with Girl Scouts? There were so many ways that could be a bad idea…

He grabbed a rag to wipe the oil off his hands, and ran into the kitchen. “Loki, who are your guests?”

Two tall, possibly legal naked girls with mocha complexions and very big shimmering eyes stared back at him from the kitchen table. There was a pot of honey open and golden liquid pooled on toast on three plates. And yes, there was Loki.

“Ah. These are Brzzt’l and Dyn’zz’m. They are Princesses from the local hive. We were discussing where they will disperse before the cold comes.”

“And we should be going now,” said Brzzt’l (or maybe Dyn’zz’m). Her voice buzzed like a prosthesis.

“Perhaps we’ll meet you in the Spring?” said Tony.

“No,” said the first girl. “We’ll be Queens then. Queens don’t fly.”

“Too fat,” said the other girl with a wink. She aimed an air kiss at Loki. “Thank you again! Good-bye!”

As the girls waved at them both, Loki waved as well, a more complex gesture: the two shrank, growing transparent large-ish wings (for their shrinking sizes); morphed into (yes) bees. They flew through the door to the garage, and out the open garage door.

Tony turned to Loki. “What the hell was that?”

“Breakfast meeting,” Loki said. “You didn’t want them to be here as giant bees, remember?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Talking to bees is in reply of sorts to OzoneWhisp’s comments on Chapter 9.  
> 2\. Did you know that “in high dudgeon” basically means having had a stick shoved far up your ass? I didn’t. Ah, etymology.  
> 3\. Vague inspiration: _Neil Gaiman's How to Talk to Girls at Parties_ , by Gaiman, Bá, and Moon.


	13. Loki is in a cake.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one with the schwa in it.

Loki is springing out of a giant birthday cake, wearing only spangled pasties and the kind of scarf that hides Baby New Year’s crown jewels.

“Ta-daa!”

Tony sighs. “You’re throwing yourself a parole reprieve party?”

And a smile. Loki’s wearing the biggest smile Tony’s ever seen on a sane(?) person. He bows to Tony, and the scarf slips perilously.

“Many thanks for the hospitality, Stark. I leave you cake.” And—poof!—he’s gone.

Cake with footprints in it. Great.

Thə-thə-thə-thə-thə-thə-that’s all, folks!


End file.
